Currently the liquid crystal displays (LCDs) have been dominating in almost all the major display markets for several applications, such as monitors, mobile phones, televisions, notebook computers, tablet personal computers (PCs), global positioning system (GPS) devices, portable video players, as the technologies of the LCD have been developing widely, deeply and quickly.
The liquid crystals play the role of light valves to control the light transmission and the light blocking at instantaneous display time in each pixel of the LCD. In the view of the control mechanisms of the liquid crystals, the LCD can be divided into the types of the vertical alignment (VA) and the plane switching.
The VA type can be further divided into several sub-types. Generally, the VA type LCD has very fast response time for the liquid crystals, and is especially suitable for displaying the video showing very fast movements. However, when the user presses the LCD screen by fingers or other objects, the vortex-shaped pattern appears at the place being pressed on the screen of the LCD, because the distance interval of the vertical alignment of the liquid crystals is shortened by such vertically pressing on the screen. In this aspect, the VA LCD is not suitable to be used for the touch-panel display, since the screen of the touch-panel display tends to be frequently touched and pressed by the user's finger, and the displayed picture thereof will be blurred anywhere is being touched.
On the other hand, the plane switching type LCDs, including the in-plane switching (IPS) and the fringe field switching (FFS) LCDs, do not have this kind of problem, and provide good performance for the touch-panel display, since the liquid crystal alignments thereof occur in the plane (horizontal) direction rather than the vertical direction.
The electric field of the plane switching type LCD is generated and driven in the horizontal direction, so the plane switching type LCD can also be classified as a horizontal electric field driving LCD. Since the electric field of the horizontal electric field driving LCD is generated and driven in the horizontal direction, all the positive and negative electrodes are fabricated on the bottom glass, which is located below the liquid crystal cells. In contrast, in VA type LCD, the positive and negative electrodes are located on the top glass above the liquid crystal cells and the bottom glass below the liquid crystal cells, respectively. Thus, the horizontal electric field driving LCD tends to have the electrostatic issue. The current solution to this issue is made by coating an indium tin oxide (ITO) layer on the outer or inner surface of the top glass, i.e. the outmost glass to the viewer. FIG. 1 shows a cross-sectional view of a sub-pixel of an FFS LCD 10 in the prior art. In FIG. 1, the structure of positive and negative electrodes are formed on the bottom glass 12, and the transparent ITO layer 13 is coated on the upper surface, i.e. outer surface, of the top glass 11. Since the ITO layer 13 is electrically conductive, electrostatic charges would not accumulate.
However, as the display devices are going to the style with the slim design, it is required to reduce the thickness of the glass used, and usually the glass needs to be ground and polished or the thinner glass needs to be adopted. In such conditions, the glass 11 coated with the ITO layer 13 in the LCD 10 in the prior art as shown in FIG. 1 can not be ground and polished. Besides, if the glass 11 is ground and polished to reduce its thickness at first and then coated with the ITO layer 13, usually the glass 11 would break. Thus, it is difficult to attain both the slim design and antistatic effect for the horizontal electric field driving LCD, and an effective solution is urgently required.
For overcoming the above-mentioned problem existing in the conventional techniques, the novel display apparatus with both the slim design and antistatic effect are developed to solve the above-mentioned problem, after the deep analyses, researches and plenty of experiments by the inventor.